Summer 2012

What are your fondest memories of the bygone elusive summer gone by?

I remember the times of innocence when summer meant long days spent outside under a tree playing make believe stories, running amok in the neighborhood with no fear of reprimand that you were playing with boys, or any one would kidnap you. I had no I-pad, no iMac, no Wi-Fi, no pap, or a game boy to put me into a trance drooling away to a glazed look. In fact my fondest memory albeit a hazy one is playing marbles, hopscotch or driving this old, antiquated green Luna with my brothers and asking for petrol money.

Life, was simpler, we enjoyed the pace of those slow days, the television serials that were simple, no complication of a three-way love affair gone wrong.  We just knew about mythology and a simple khandaan that drew us into its embrace and stopped the whole country when it was aired.

Music and its romance was simple, an affair that was based on lyrics, the composition and no rap. The words meant something and there was always a subtle message behind the song.

These days, the summer is not summer but an example of global warming and is explained in terms of cloud formation, global warming and the environmental pollution. Simple words like loo (sand storm) and the dust spirals have been forgotten. Its just about complicating life now, we like to pepper our conversation with terms that confuse rather then clear.  Monsoon is not about rain but about the forecasts done by the met department, and the impact it will have on the economy. It’s all about visiting a foreign land, a country which high up on the scale of snob value. It s all about name – dropping, cities of one’s own country are ignored as they have no value, and are just passé’. Why would you want to visit an old fort or an archaeological dig here when you can name drop of a phoren country and pay in euros to see an old Roman dig? In fact, simplicity is a dirty word only to be resurrected when you are in the middle of a crisis and need help from the pressures from the fast pace of life.

And on top of all this we have an underhand way where the Education Minister who in cahoots with the men of the country! There is a conspiracy been hatched whereby all the mother’s aka like me have to do Summer Projects all translating into those 5 important marks? We have all gone so far ahead in the rat-race of marks which is consuming all of us that we think of out of the world projects to be one up than the next mommy, sorry kid. When we were young, oh those times our mothers never made projects, charts or crazy 3-Dimensional projects. Now, on top of the hottest summer since 1880 (British Raj times) a woman faces run away maids, power cuts, no water, rising spiraling costs, hyper inflation, a crazy political scenario where we don’t know who is running the country, an opposition which is a divided house in itself. I think the country just runs on all the prayers of its devotees!

My quandary for this summer is the complete comprehensive evaluation needed to be done so as to ace the subjects; and on top of it no Basanti and the local project maker has upped her prices too, as she says there is a huge rush and I should put my name on the waiting list.

Why do we worry about the big things in life? Medicine, engineering, Civil service, Army etc.… there are more opportunities out there waiting …A project maker!

Any one who wants to join hands please contact seriously. A union of mothers is shortly being made, with a district level, a state level and national level committee.